Kent Bush: Lions get home cooking

Tuesday

Feb 11, 2014 at 11:44 AMFeb 11, 2014 at 11:44 AM

By Kent BushMore Content Now

Look kids, natural selection is taking place right before our eyes.

A Danish zoo recently let people watch as they fed a giraffe to a lion. The zoo excused the act because they didn't want to have inbreeding in their herd, so the 2-year old giraffe was killed with a bolt-gun, skinned and fed to the lions.

That's a pretty tall tale - sorry, bad giraffe humor.

This was a great day for the lions. You know they sit there smelling those giraffes all day just imagining ways they can find them and eat them.

Thanks to the Copenhagen Zoo, they didn't have to go out for dinner, they got their giraffe delivered.

One zoo worker said they had given children that watched a greater understanding of giraffe anatomy by skinning and serving the animal to the lions.

In the words of Chris Farley as Tommy Boy, "I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull's (backside), but I'd rather take a butcher's word for it."

At zoos, somehow they place an equal value on all animal life. So, for instance, this spokesperson couldn't see why people had no trouble feeding a goat or a pig to the king of the jungle, but somehow a giraffe becoming a big-spotted buffet item was a big deal.

"I know the giraffe is a nice-looking animal, but I don't think there would have been such an outrage if it had been an antelope, and I don't think anyone would have lifted an eyebrow if it was a pig," he said.

But there are less than 80,000 giraffes in the world - down from 140,000 just 15 years ago.

There are more than 5 million wild pigs in America. There are 1.7 million domesticated hogs on farms in Kansas alone.

Maybe that is why people wouldn't mind seeing lions enjoy a few pork chops instead of a 15-foot tall doe-eyed animal.

I also don't understand why they had to skin the giraffe to feed it to the lions. No one is working as a sous chef in the Serengeti. Let those big cats do a little work.

This was a story that didn't need to be told. There were so many better solutions than killing a zoo animal for food.

Improve the divorce process

Keith Esau (R-Olathe) just did something that I am sure happens all of the time but I have never heard of it. He filed a bill in the Kansas legislature "for a friend."

I'm sure this is a lot like when I worked in a hotel and guys would come to the front desk and tell me their "friends" wanted to know if there were any strip clubs around here.

Esau's bill would take away the option of incompatibility as a reason for divorce in Kansas. Instead, a list of eight reasons would be available to excuse ending a marriage.

It turns out that his friend was John Bradford (R-Lansing) who claimed credit for authoring the bill and asking Esau to introduce it.

The bill is an attempt to promote stronger families and make divorce less convenient. Family is important and I understand the desire to lessen the divorce rate.

But if you think couples can't figure out which one of the eight new reasons they can use for divorce, you obviously haven't heard how incredibly creative defense lawyers can be when they explain why, just because all of the facts point to their client, he really isn't guilty.

I know that there are ways to improve the divorce process so that we could help keep families together that can be saved yet don't increase the animosity and red tape around an inevitable divorce.

People are going to get divorced. It isn't a good thing, but it is a real thing.

And those families who still have to raise kids together after the separation don't need any more reasons to be disagreeable.

Kent Bush is publisher of the Butler County Times-Gazette in Kansas.

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